the Sunnah; only that his hearing from Abu Isḥāq occurred after the latter’s mental confusion had set in.
Abū Zurʿah al-Rāzī said, “Zuhayr heard from Abū Isḥāq after the ikhtilāṭ (loss of accurate memory), yet he himself remains reliable.”
It was said that Zuhayr moved to al-Jazīrah in 164 AH, and that he was struck by falaj (paralysis) a year or a little more before his death, but—praise be to Allah—his faculties did not change.
Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah told one of the students, “Commit yourself to Zuhayr ibn Muʿāwiyah, for there is no one like him in Kūfah.”
Abū Jaʿfar al-Nufaylī and ʿAmr ibn Khālid al-Ḥarrānī said, “Zuhayr died in 173 AH.”
Al-Nufaylī added, “In the month of Rajab.”
Some others said that he died in 174 AH—this is an error—and he was in his eighties.
Among the elevated isnāds that have reached me from him is the following: I read to Abū al-Maʿālī Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq al-Abarqūhī; al-Faṭḥ ibn ʿAbd al-Salām in Baghdad informed you; Hibat Allāh ibn al-Ḥusayn informed us; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Bazzāz informed us; ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī the Vizier dictated to us in 389 AH; Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad dictated to us; ʿAlī ibn al-Jaʿd narrated to us, saying: Zuhayr told us, from Simāk, Ziyād ibn ʿIlāqah, and Ḥuṣayn, all of them from Jābir ibn Samurah:
“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘After me there will be twelve leaders.’ Then he spoke some words I did not grasp.
“In one version I asked my father; in another I asked the people, and they replied, ‘All of them are from Quraysh.’” (1)